Barclays Boss Jenkins Sharpens Jobs Axe

Barclays is to axe thousands of jobs outside its investment bank as part of a streamlining of Britain's second-biggest lender under its new chief executive.

The cull, which will come alongside roughly 2,000 previously-reported cuts inside Barclays' investment bank, will underline the scale of the transformation planned by Antony Jenkins, who took on the top job five months ago.

Details of the job cuts are expected to be announced later alongside a wider review of the bank's operations.

The precise number of cuts being planned by Mr Jenkins was unclear on Monday evening, but even 7,000 job losses across the group would represent just 5% of Barclays' 140,000-strong workforce.

One insider said that the cuts would be "significant" and could reach "double-digit thousands over time", but refused to be specific.

Mr Jenkins has drawn up a series of plans aimed at rebuilding Barclays' reputation among both shareholders and customers.

His blueprint will include cutting Barclays' bonus pool to less than £2bn and forcing senior investment bankers to hold onto their awards for longer.

The new boss will also, as Sky News revealed on Saturday , take the axe to Barclays' structured capital markets unit, which made hundreds of millions of pounds for the bank through complex tax-led transactions.

Barclays will announce its annual results for 2012 this morning.

Despite a £290m fine for Libor-rigging and more than £1bn being set aside for mis-selling products to customers, the bank is expected to report substantial profits.